In Search of Context

At a time when China is synonymous with the building boom, many architects (especially from the West) were given the opportunity to use it as an open test field for their most extravagant projects, often in the form of basketballs, coins, buildings with sexual connotations... Chinese President Xi Jinping tried to put an end to this, saying in his famous speech held in Beijing in late 2014 that, in China, there would no longer be room for strange buildings, and, as one of those examples, he mentioned the cctv building by Rem Koolhaas, a structure ridiculed in certain local circles due to its

ponderous size, but also due to the shape that resembles two legs wearing short pants.